A Forum for discussing emerging smart discoveries and emerging technologies with built-in intelligence or embedded smarts, as well as the new cognitive skills needed to succeed in the smart economy. The Smart Future is already here, just the last page hasn't been written yet! Every advance brings benefits as well as intrusions.
Have your say !! Read, enjoy, explore, speculate, comment !!

February 24, 2016

Is Russia wagging the Liberal political tail in Ottawa? –Walter Derzko

CONCLUSION:

If USA/ Canada is training YPG soldiers and Canadian volunteers are fighting together with Kurdish YPG troops, who appear to be allied with Assad, ISIS and Russia, then there is a problem!! By Walter Derzko, SFi (CONNECTING THE DOTS)

N.B. Hat tip to Bohdan C for spotting the Hammond quote below-WD

FACT: In January 2014, before Moscow invaded and annexed Crimea, Mr. Putin awarded the former Liberal prime minister- Jean Chretien, Russia’s Order of Friendship for “his substantial contribution to the strengthening and development of friendship and co-operation with the Russian Federation.” [1]

FACT:Former Canadian Liberal PM Jean Chretien (1993-2003) visited Moscow in April 2015 and had a secret meeting with Putin. Publically, details are unknown, however, the InterAction Council said Mr. Chrétien, who is the co-chair of their organization, will “report back to the group on his discussions with the Russian President.” Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma is also on the Interaction Council [1]

FACT: The Liberal Party in Canada has withdrawn CF-18 Hornet air support and has promised instead that it would send trainers to train Kurdish troops on the ground. [2] “Western nations have seen them as reliable allies in the war and have provided them with air support, training, equipment and cash. As a result, the YPG, the Kurdish force that is battling ISIL, has been able to carve out its own mini-state in northeastern Syria.” [14] N.B. It’s not clear from recent news reports that Canada is now directly training YPG troops, but if they are, there could be a problem. The Canadian press seems to use Pershmerga and YPG interchangeably (see below)

FACT:Canadian volunteers are fighting with a Kurdish faction called YPG says National Post [3], [15]

FACT:“Britain has seen "disturbing evidence" that Kurdish YPG forces are coordinating with the Syrian regime and the Russian air force, the Foreign Secretary- Philip Hammond has said.” [4]

FACT: “The Kurdish YPG, which has become the West’s main ground force against Isil, has taken advantage of a massive regime offensive in north Syria to seize territory of its own from US-backed rebels, effectively leaving Washington in a proxy war with itself. "What we have seen over the last weeks is very disturbing evidence of coordination between Syrian Kurdish forces, the Syrian regime and the Russian air force which are making us distinctly uneasy about the Kurds' role in all of this," Philip Hammond told Parliament on Tuesday. After years of marginalization at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Syria’s Kurds have emerged as one of the war’s key power brokers, enjoying the support of both Washington and Moscow, even as the two powers square off on opposing sides of the conflict. [4]

FACT:Russia and FSB /formerly KGB is funding and funneling arms to terrorists in the Middle East; “BEIRUT — Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. At the same time they say the direct interdependence between Russia and Hezbollah is increasing.” [5]

FACT:Russians have been fighting for ISIS at least since 2011 [6]

FACT: The KGB/ Kremlin trained most of Saddam Hussein’s top Baathist army leaders, who then went on to form ISIS [7], [9] “The KGB, the East German Stasi and Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency are the direct progenitors of the Islamic State security apparatus [7]

FACT: Islam is a political movement masquerading as a religion (3:15 of audio) Admiral (Ret) James Lyons on Islam as a threat doctrine. [8]

FACT: RUSSIA IS ISIS or ISIS = Russia ; Both ISIS and the Assad regime are led by military and intelligence officers trained in the KGB and both rely on propaganda as a means of internal control, not only of controlling their international image, which is why both so virulently repress independent media that contradicts their officially sanctioned version. [9], [10], [11], [12], [13] N.B. Why did the world know about Osama bin Laden, 10 minutes after 9/11. But I bet you can’t rhyme off who the leaders of ISIS are !!!

FACT:Russia has historic and current ties to the PKK/ PYD Party [11]

FACT:“Turkey considers YPG a terrorist group because of its affiliation to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. The party’s armed wing, the PKK, has been waging a war against Turkey (a NATO member) since 1984 as it fights for greater rights for Kurds in Turkey. In December, Turkish fighter jets attacked PKK supply camps in northern Iraq. Over the last several weeks, new fighting has erupted between Turkish troops and the PKK in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir” [14]

[5] BEIRUT — Lebanese Hezbollah field commanders with troops fighting in Syria tell The Daily Beast they are receiving heavy weapons directly from Russia with no strings attached. The commanders say there is a relationship of complete coordination between the Assad regime in Damascus, Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. At the same time they say the direct interdependence between Russia and Hezbollah is increasing.

[7] “The KGB, the East German Stasi and Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency are the direct progenitors of the Islamic State security apparatus. The proof lies in a cache of documents uncovered after a shootout last year between Syrian rebels and an Iraqi intelligence officer now believed to be the strategic mastermind behind the Islamic State takeover of northern Syria”. Source: BEN MACINTYRE ; THE TIMES APRIL 25, 2015 12:00AM Islamic State owes more to Kremlin than Koran

Text of report by Turkish newspaper Milliyet website on 27 October [Commentary by Nihat Ali Ozcan: "Russia and the PKK at the Crossroads of Syria"] Russia's increased presence in Syria has not only changed political and military balances but also reopened the "covert operation" files of intelligence organizations. Russia's increased presence in Syria has not only changed political and military balances but also reopened the "covert operation" files of intelligence organizations. This being Syria, the PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] - a terrorist organization that was the "guest" of Damascus for 36 years - could of course not be ignored. Al-Asad and Russia did exactly that. They never forgot their old friend, the PKK, which they inherited from the Cold War. They remained in contact [with the PKK] throughout the [Syrian] civil war. Now, the PKK/PYD [Democratic Union Party] has become a prized commodity in the war market and is growing impatient about claiming its own rewards.4

Abstract/The associate of [former Chechen separatist leader] Dzhokhar Dudayev and the former field commander claims that the Kremlin was involved in the creation of Islamic State and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is controlling it.

Full Text

Excerpt from report by private Ukrainian ICTV television on 22 November

[Presenter] It has become known this week that Chechens are fighting on the side of Islamic State [IS]. [Pro-Moscow Chechen leader] Ramzan Kadyrov confirmed that almost 500 of his fighters had joined the terrorists. He naturally considers them traitors. However, another well-known Chechen, Akhmed Zakayev, told an absolutely different version to Fakty Tyzhnya [this news programme]. The associate of [former Chechen separatist leader] Dzhokhar Dudayev and the former field commander claims that the Kremlin was involved in the creation of Islamic State and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is controlling it. Let us hear an excerpt from the interview that we recorded in London. [Zakayev] I have an absolute, 100 per cent, evidence base that IS is controlled by Russian special services today. Those are Iraqi military men who worked under Saddam's rule [former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein]. You know they were Putin's and KGB's allies. Another group comes from the Northern Caucasus which was sent there as soon as it, the so-called IS, started to be formed. These particular secret agents exert their influence and are controlled by the Russian special services. I am more than confident that Putin expected something to happen in Paris or some other place. This action brought political results or political dividends only to one person in the world, Putin, and Putin's regime. Of course, it would be naive to think that everything happened by accident there or was a coincidence. In any case, I am sure that it happened under a planned scenario.

Litvinenko stated that "all the bloodiest terrorists of the world" were connected to FSB-KGB, including Carlos "The Jackal" Ramírez, Yassir Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Abdullah Öcalan, Wadie Haddad of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Hawi who led the Communist Party of Lebanon, Ezekias Papaioannou from Cyprus, Sean Garland from Ireland and many others. He said that all of them were trained, funded, and provided with weapons, explosives and counterfeit documents in order to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide and that each act of terrorism made by these people was carried out according to the task and under the rigid control of the KGB of the USSR.[61] Litvinenko said that "the center of global terrorism is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the Chechen Republic. The terrorism infection creeps away worldwide from the cabinets of the Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin".[62][63]

The debate was sparked by a secret "Canadian Eyes Only" intelligence analysis by Transport Canada that looked at the Kurdish peshmerga, whom Canadian special forces operators have been instructing since late 2014. The report warns there are some factions of the militia group that are designated as terrorist entities under federal law. It focuses on the separate issue of Canadian volunteers who've gone to fight alongside the Kurds. "Any Canadians claiming to have links to organizations such as the People's Worker Party (PKK) are likely to become the subject of Canada's anti-terror legislation," says the report to the department, one of many federal agencies with a security assessment branch. The intelligence analysis, dated Nov. 28, 2014, and obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, parses the various branches and factions of the peshmerga, which make up almost 60 per cent of Kurdish security forces in the region. One of the factions is the People's Worker Party, or PKK, which is designated as a terrorist entity under Canadian law. Turkey, a NATO ally, takes a particularly hard line on the PKK, and recently threatened to boycott United Nations-backed peace talks on Syria if a political group associated with the PKK was at the table. It is unclear how many Canadians — if any — are fighting with the PKK, or another faction known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, but there have been several published reports of it happening since the war heated up in the summer of 2014. The YPG, which came to international attention during the siege of Kobani, has not been deemed a terrorist group.

January 17, 2016

Are we about to see a breakthrough in USA and Russian negotiations over Ukraine? A complete and total prisoner swap or change including illegally imprisoned Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko and others? Walter Derzko

January 23, 2012

By Leonard Liggio

Foreign Policy magazine (January-February 2012) lists Zbigniew Brzezinski among the five most important living influences on US foreign policy. In the weekend Financial Times (January 14-15, 2012), Edward Luce (FT’s chief US commentator) describes his recent luncheon interview with the former National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter and current trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After 1981, he continued in Washington as a professor at Georgetown University. Over his Dubonnet, he begins with his disappointment with President Barak Obama: “I’m all in favor of grand important speeches but the president then has to link his sermons to a strategy.” Although he has voted for Republican presidential candidates (such as George H. W. Bush in 1988) he is highly doubtful of the current Republican candidates. Compared to how well informed about the world he considers Chinese leaders: “And then you watch one of our Republican presidential debates …. The GOP field is just embarrassing.”

Brzezinski is 83 years old and was born in Warsaw. His father was a diplomat and Brzezinski spent his first three years in Paris and the next three in Berlin. His father was assigned to the embassy in Canada, so the family remained there when World War II began. He attributes his skills to attending Loyola High School in Montreal. (My graduate professor at Fordham University, Oskar Halecki (who had been secretary of the Polish delegation at the Versailles conference and then dean of Warsaw University) was a visiting professor at Grenoble University when the war began and was fortunate to move to Laval University in Quebec before the invasion of France.)

I first became aware of Brzezinski when I was working for the William Volker Fund assigned to read journal articles or books that might relate to its scholarly program. I extensively reviewed a book of Brzezinski written (c. 1961) (when he was at Harvard University) on the economic system of the Soviet Bloc. I recommended the book as knowledgeable and insightful.

He was appointed a professor of international relations at Columbia University. He became an advisor to Hubert Humphrey’s vice-presidential campaign and defended Lyndon B. Johnson’s war in Vietnam on the basis of the ‘Falling Dominos’ theory (if South Vietnam came under the Viet Cong, then Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia would become Communist.) (That theory arose in the 1950s: that Japan would want to trade with Red China if communists blocked Japan’s markets in Southeast Asia. Japan was trading with China through third countries, so the theory was questionable.)

Brzezinski opposed Republican senators critical of Johnson’s war. Senators Sterling Morton of Kentucky and Mark Hatfield of Oregon led the revival of the Republican party with over forty new Republican congressmen in 1966.

To him, today’s America appears to lack education in world politics. He sees a US failure in history and geography (French education always twined geography and history). “Americans don’t learn about the world, they don’t study world history, other than American history in a very one-sided fashion, and they don’t study geography. In that context of widespread ignorance, the ongoing and deliberately fanned fear about the outside world, which is connected with this grandiose war on jihadi terrorism, makes the American public extremely susceptible to extremist appeals.”

Fifty years ago when I began as a college instructor, there was a textbook which combined European and American history. However, as I was teaching fifteen hours a week the course in World Civilizations there was a dilemma. The chairman of the history and government department was a Viennese who had studied Japanese in the US army. He selected a textbook which went beyond European civilization to include: Hindu, Chinese, Japanese , etc. I had no background in those areas and told my five classes to ignore those chapters. American students have a hard enough time with European names, trying to have them or myself master exotic names was not education but chaos. I am reminded of one of my colleagues, a Chinese refugee from Red China, who upset his students of Chinese history when he later explained that the first seven dynasties they had struggled to learn were mythical.

Brzezinski considers America’s greatest national security threat to be the weak US economic situation, especially the political failure to address the government’s economic problems. His strategic advice: “the US should prod Europe to bring both Russia and Turkey into an enlarged west. America should hedge against China’s rise, without explicitly attempting to contain it. Most importantly, the US should revitalize its domestic economy if it wants to stave off further decline. On all counts, Brzezinski seems pessimistic about the likelihood that Washington’s elites will start to act strategically again.”

It may not have to attack Siberia, it could just buy it outright...a new peaceful war?

Paper says China seeking to "assimilate" Russia's Far East

Anonymous. BBC Monitoring Former Soviet Union. London: Feb 9, 2011.

Abstract

It is significant that the Chinese authorities are already setting up special organs on their own territory to manage the zones of assimilation in Russia. "The Heilongjiang Administration has formed a special leadership group responsible for resolving issues that arise in the process of constructing and developing foreign industrial and agricultural zones," the Chinese state agency reports (Heilongjiang is a border province neighbouring on Russia with a population of more than 38 million and its administrative centre in Harbin). Thus, the process of assimilating Russia's Far East is being managed and controlled not so much from Moscow or Khabarovsk as from Harbin - more exactly, from the "special leadership group" set up by Chinese officials in the Heilongjiang Province Administration. The management of Chinese zones on Russian territory from the PRC is perfectly justified - after all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Investment to the tune of 3 billion dollars - if the calculations of the Chinese themselves are to be believed - constitutes a major financial resource which exceeds the subsidies from Moscow to the local budgets.

Full Text

Text of report by the website of heavyweight Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 9 February

[Editorial: "Chinese invest in Russian regions more than Moscow does. Administrations to manage Far East are being set up in PRC"]

China is actively assimilating the territory of Russia's Far East, investing far greater funds in this region than the Russian Government. According to an NCNA report, Chinese investors have established 34 special Chinese zones in Amur Oblast, Maritime Kray, Khabarovsk Kray, and also the Jewish Autonomous Region, where they have invested approximately 3 billion dollars. For comparison: Moscow is promising to transfer to these regions' budgets almost three times less money this year - the equivalent of less than 1 billion dollars.

Chinese investment in Russian lands is not just a private initiative by enterprising neighbours - vegetable growers, lumberjacks, and industrialists - but a clear state policy to assimilate new territories. "With the permission of the governments of China and Russia Chinese entrepreneurs may open industrial and agricultural zones in Russia, including zones of processing, stock raising, construction, timber cutting, and wholesale markets," NCNA explains.

It is significant that the Chinese authorities are already setting up special organs on their own territory to manage the zones of assimilation in Russia. "The Heilongjiang Administration has formed a special leadership group responsible for resolving issues that arise in the process of constructing and developing foreign industrial and agricultural zones," the Chinese state agency reports (Heilongjiang is a border province neighbouring on Russia with a population of more than 38 million and its administrative centre in Harbin). Thus, the process of assimilating Russia's Far East is being managed and controlled not so much from Moscow or Khabarovsk as from Harbin - more exactly, from the "special leadership group" set up by Chinese officials in the Heilongjiang Province Administration. The management of Chinese zones on Russian territory from the PRC is perfectly justified - after all, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Investment to the tune of 3 billion dollars - if the calculations of the Chinese themselves are to be believed - constitutes a major financial resource which exceeds the subsidies from Moscow to the local budgets. Thus, in 2011 federal subsidies "to level out budgetary provision" are planned to the tune of approximately 170 million dollars for Amur Oblast, approximately 74 million dollars for the Jewish Autonomous Region, 234 million dollars for Khabarovsk Kray, and 344 million dollars for Maritime Kray. It is clear that these amounts bear no comparison with the 3 billion dollars in Chinese investments.

Of course, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the Chinese were not being modest and put the maximum value on their investments in Russia's Far East. It is possible that the amount of investment does not, in actual fact, reach the stated 3 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the state agency's official report on multibillion-dollar investments in Russia means that the authorities in the Celestial Kingdom are emphasizing their interest in assimilating our eastern territories - "in earnest and for a long time," moreover. At the same time the Chinese themselves emphasize the natural nature of their economic expansion into Russia. "The opening of zones in Russia by Chinese investors is mutually advantageous for both sides," Song Kui, a specialist at Heilongjiang Social Sciences Academy, believes, cited by NCNA. First, this makes it possible to increase the level of openness of China's border regions and to place superfluous work hands. Second, it helps the development of the Far East, increases collection of local taxes, and resolves the problem of the manpower shortage. Only we cannot understand why investment in the Far East is being initiated not by the Russian but the Chinese authorities, which are capable of organizing investment in promising production facilities and arranging production of output that is in demand both in Russia and in China.

January 30, 2011

"There is no doubt that Israel was caught with its pants down," said a minister in Israel's defense cabinet. "We were completely surprised by what is happening in Egypt right now. Nobody predicted this."

Egyptian upheaval a 'complete surprise' to Israel

JERUSALEM -- Despite its renown for gathering precise intelligence about its Arab neighbors, Israel was caught completely off guard by the political upheaval in Egypt, officials said Sunday.

The outpouring of Egyptians demanding the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak has shaken this country's foreign policy establishment.

Top officials met Sunday to discuss the implications for Israel's security, but they were unable to produce any recommendations on what to do.

"There is no doubt that Israel was caught with its pants down," said a minister in Israel's defense cabinet. "We were completely surprised by what is happening in Egypt right now. Nobody predicted this."

May 16, 2010

Last week I had an interesting and lively series of discussions with some policy wonks and political science experts who wanted my opinion on where the next geopolitical hotspots would be...one of my contentions was central Asia. The US military offensive doctrine of "circle the wagons" around Russia has been in play for several decades and it has Soviet-minded NATO-phobes and Russian nationalists nervously eyeing the growing encrochment and encirclement.

NATO and the USA has been quietly and discreatly surrounding Russia with military outposts or forming alliances and courtships with western friendly governments for a few decades starting with Poland in central Europe, Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan (which could have an alternate agenda too). Logically next they should be moving east into Central Asia.Who is up for courting there? Well, the rarely noticed but strategically important country of Mongolia, located between Russia and China.

They asked me to prove my contentions, so here's a story I found on the BBC Monitoring FSU News service back in April which supports my views, strategic thinking and observations:

On 29 March NATO officially recognized Mongolia as a participating country in the coalition in Afghanistan and invited an Ulan-Bator representative to a meeting of the heads of ministries of foreign affairs, which is to be held in Estonia on 23 April. The analyst concludes that Mongolia is growing increasingly close to the USA and NATO. As a confirmation of his conclusion, he also points to the regular participation of the Mongolian military in the joint Khan Quest annual military exercises. "With its enormous spaces (more than 600,000 square miles) and a small population of less than three million people, of which nearly 40 per cent live in the capital, Mongolia is an optimal place for the deployment of American military intelligence gathering (ground-based, air-based, and satellite) for simultaneously keeping an eye on China and Russia. The country's new president, who was educated in the USA, will most likely not deny Washington's requests," [Rick Rozoff] asserts on the Opednews.com website.

By the way, Russian specialists believe it to be unlikely that Mongolia will make such an unfriendly gesture towards Russia. Colonel General Viktor Yesin, the former chief of the Main Staff of the Strategic Missile Troops (RVSN), suggested in an interview with "NG" that this article may be an attempt to cause dissension in relations between Ulan-Bator and Moscow and Beijing. "If one assumes that such an agreement between Mongolia and the USA will be achieved, it will indeed give the Americans enormous opportunities to collect intelligence on a broad range against Russia, particularly Siberia and the Far East, and especially against China. But I believe that Mongolia's leadership will hardly choose to take such a step, considering the dependence of Mongolia's economy upon the PRC and Russia," Yesin said.

Text of report by the website of heavyweight Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 6 April

["USA and NATO Flirting with Mongolia," by Andrey Terekhov. The author rejects idea that Mongolia will permit USA and NATO to deploy bases and recon assets within its territory.]

Washington and Brussels, it appears, have taken a serious interest in Mongolia. In the assessment of the American expert Rick Rozoff, this country, which is participating in the war in Afghanistan, is in reality of greater interest for USA intelligence gathering than for the fact that it is located between Russia and China. "NG" experts acknowledge that from a military point of view the deployment of USA bases in Mongolia would have a negative impact upon the security of both Russia and China.

Rozoff is the author of a recent sensational article that says that America "is surrounding Russia and China" with its ABM system. He notes that in the last decade the USA has set up bases and other military facilities and deployed its armed forces in those parts of the world that it was unable to penetrate during the epoch of the cold war. This includes: Africa -2,000 military men in Djibouti; the Black Sea region -seven new air force and training bases in Bulgaria and Romania; the de-facto control of Air Force, Navy, and Ground Troops, as well as a tracking facility, in Georgia; and the deployment in April of batteries of Patriot systems in Poland. USA military facilities in the Middle East, in Central and Southern Asia, in Eastern Asia, in South and Central America, in the Indian Ocean, and in the southern part of the Pacific Ocean continue to be added to the list. "Mongolia, no matter how remote and inaccessible it might be, is not immune to the world-wide wave of American military expansion," Rozoff states.

On 29 March NATO officially recognized Mongolia as a participating country in the coalition in Afghanistan and invited an Ulan-Bator representative to a meeting of the heads of ministries of foreign affairs, which is to be held in Estonia on 23 April. The analyst concludes that Mongolia is growing increasingly close to the USA and NATO. As a confirmation of his conclusion, he also points to the regular participation of the Mongolian military in the joint Khan Quest annual military exercises. "With its enormous spaces (more than 600,000 square miles) and a small population of less than three million people, of which nearly 40 per cent live in the capital, Mongolia is an optimal place for the deployment of American military intelligence gathering (ground-based, air-based, and satellite) for simultaneously keeping an eye on China and Russia. The country's new president, who was educated in the USA, will most likely not deny Washington's requests," Rozoff asserts on the Opednews.com website.

By the way, Russian specialists believe it to be unlikely that Mongolia will make such an unfriendly gesture towards Russia. Colonel General Viktor Yesin, the former chief of the Main Staff of the Strategic Missile Troops (RVSN), suggested in an interview with "NG" that this article may be an attempt to cause dissension in relations between Ulan-Bator and Moscow and Beijing. "If one assumes that such an agreement between Mongolia and the USA will be achieved, it will indeed give the Americans enormous opportunities to collect intelligence on a broad range against Russia, particularly Siberia and the Far East, and especially against China. But I believe that Mongolia's leadership will hardly choose to take such a step, considering the dependence of Mongolia's economy upon the PRC and Russia," Yesin said.

He emphasized that Mongolia has assumed the status of a non-nuclear zone and that the country's leadership has demonstrated its intent to remain a strictly neutral state. Ulan-Bator, which is an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (ShOS), does not wish to become a member of the organization, as long as it maintains its neutral status. However, in the opinion of our interviewee, the fact that Mongolia was largely ignored in the 1990s has had a negative impact upon our relations.

Galina Yaskina, a doctor of political sciences and a chief scientific worker at the Institute of Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is also not inclined to dramatize the situation. Mongolia has proclaimed that it is not permitting the deployment of foreign military facilities within its territory. In addition, relations between our countries are characterized as a strategic partnership. This policy was again confirmed by the Declaration for the Development of a Strategic Partnership on 25 August 2009, which was signed during the state visit of President Dmitriy Medvedyev to Ulan-Bator. Vladimir Putin was in Mongolia shortly before that.

Doctor Yaskina told "NG" that: "The decline in combined trade has been halted, and the turnover of goods has reached a level in excess of one billion dollars ahead of schedule. The role of regional and border ties is increasing. In February of this year the heads of the governments reached an agreement at the request of the Mongolian side in regard to a massive outbreak of hoof and mouth disease in cattle in Mongolia, by which the Russian Federation will give humanitarian aid to Ulan-Bator by offering it 57,000 tons of fodder grain," Doctor Yaskina told "NG." In the area of defence, cooperation has a positive dynamic and joint exercises are organized. In the future, the development of relations will undoubtedly be of a constructive nature, she summarized.

March 24, 2010

I've been compiling a list of qualitative and quantitative foresight (prediction) methods and the total has passed over 50.

New Scientist magazine this week reviews one quantitative method called Bayesian Game Theory, in surprisingly quite an understandable fashion, that even a lay person like me can understand...well maybe not all the math details but the overall workings are quite clear.

They turn to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a professor of politics at New York University, who back in 1979 developed a game theory based prediction model, which he calls predictioneering. He says" I can predict events and decisions that involve negotiations, coercion (lies, bluffing, reneging on promises), cooperation or bullying." The model predicts what people will do in "strategic situations" where the outcome also depends on other people's decisions ie domestic politics, foreign policy, geopolitical conflicts, business decisions and social interactions.

New Scientist writes: "

"Over the past 30 years, Bueno de Mesquita has made thousands of predictions about hundreds of issues from geopolitics to personal problems. Overall, he claims, his hit rate is about 90 per cent. So how does he do it?

Examples: Terrorism & Climate Change

Terrorism:

"Bueno de Mesquita recently used it to make a prediction on the political situation in Pakistan. Working with a group of students, he asked how willing the Pakistani government would be to pursue Al-Qaida and Taliban militants in its territory, and how the US government could exert influence on their decision."

In January 2008 the students fed in data on all the players, including the US, Pakistan's then president Pervez Musharraf and other leading Pakistani politicans. Their assumption was that the US would offer foreign aid to persuade Pakistan's leaders to target the terrorists, and Pakistan would try to extract the maximum amount of aid possible from the US.

The model predicted that to get maximum cooperation from Pakistan, the US would need to donate at least $1.5 billion in 2009, double the projected 2008 figure. In return for this Pakistan would pursue the terrorists on a scale of 80 out of 100, but no more. In other words, the leadership would make considerable effort to reduce the terrorist threat but not to completely eliminate it. "The Pakistani government are no fools," explains Bueno de Mesquita. "They know that the money will dry up if Al-Qaida and the Taliban are destroyed. So they will rein the threat in and reduce it, but not utterly destroy it."

The outcome? According to Bueno de Mesquita, the US government authorised $1.5 billion in foreign aid to Pakistan in 2009, and the Pakistani leadership sustained pursuit of the militants at that level. "We have done very well," says Bueno de Mesquita.

Climate Change:

So what of the future? Another of Bueno de Mesquita's recent predictions addresses the future of climate change negotiations up to 2050. Depressingly, he predicts that although the world will negotiate tougher greenhouse gas reductions than in the Kyoto protocol, in practise these are likely to be abandoned as Brazil, India and China rise in power in relation to the European Union and the US."

See: The Man who sees the Future, New Scientist Volume 250 No 2752 March 20,2010, pg 42

October 30, 2006

Corporations who are seeking to expand their international operations(either by making substantial investments in local corporations, by developing new products for new markets, or by establishing regional manufacturing, distribution, or sales facilities) often encounter substantial risks that greatly differ from the domestic risks they encounter at home.

"… the possibility that political decisions, events, or conditions in a country, including those that might be defined as social, will affect the business environment such that investors will lose money or have a reduced profit margin,"

Examples include:

corruption,

punitive taxation, and

arbitrary rejection of license applications.

Political risks are best defined in terms of political events. Political events result in part from decisions made by political actors-such as government officials (e.g., politicians, legislators, and regulators). The decisions they make include decisions to expropriate property, to delay consideration of license applications, retreat on or disregard signed prior agreements and to ignore intellectual property violations.

These actors may be advised by influencers --certain non-government organizations (NGOs)-such as environmental, charitable, social, and religious organizations-who may also be considered political actors. as well. In addition, political actors and influencers may include religious leaders, foreign investors, local oligarchs and business owners (who may be politicians, as well ) and others whose actions may affect political events. The actors may be identified explicitly, or the events they generate may be the only overt signs of their presence.

The key to analyzing political events is obtaining good reliable information about these events.

This can be done in the traditional way with tried and true on-the-ground intelligence (see " A framework for conducting political event analysis using group support systems"; Decision Support Systems Volume 38, Issue 4 , January 2005, Pages 511-527) or with novel emerging smart decision support systems, such as a smart early warning system of internal armed conflict and a concept known as "Conflict Carrying capacity"

Smart Solution:

Researchers at Harvard and Ohio State University have been working for the past 6 or so years on an automated Political Crisis Early Warning System that anticipates the worst case scenario --internal armed conflict.

An early paper on was published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in 2001. Conflict-Carrying Capacity, Political Crisis, and Reconstruction A Framework for the Early Warning of Political System Vulnerability by J. Craig Jenkins, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University and Doug Bond, Program on Nonviolent Sanctions and Cultural Survival, Harvard University, Center of Excellence in Disaster Management & Humanitarian Assistance

Abstract

"The early warning of protracted political violence needs firm empirical footing in dynamic indicators of the political processes leading to political crises. This study provides a conceptual framework for the analysis of conflict-carrying capacity (or CCC) defined as the ability of political systems to regulate intense internal conflicts. CCC is indexed by the multiplicative interaction between the proportions of civil contention, state repression, and violence. The PANDA Project (1983-1994) is used to illustrate the usefulness of this CCC index in capturing system stability in an institutionalized democracy (the United States), a bureaucratic-authoritarian regime (Mexico), an institutionalized Communist regime (China), and a peaceful democratic transition (Poland). It provides early warning signals of civil war (Algeria, Sri Lanka) and moves toward political stability (Peru). Civil contention and state repression are not destabilizing per se. Rather it is the simultaneous combination of these with violent contention that leads to internal political crises and, alternatively, to political stabilization."

Source: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 45, No. 1, 3-31 (2001)

ETA: Now Recent work on the model has advanced far enough to provide fairly good predictive results.

N.B. This new foresight tool is unlikely to replace political analysts or futurists but provide them with a more robust anticipatory capability. This tool may provide the early warning signal of an event, but not the opportunity or threat windows that result.....that takes human intelligence.

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To arrange for an in house presentation or briefing on smart technologysee here

September 15, 2006

Today marks the 1st anniversary of the Smart Economy Blog. We've received many encouraging feedback & emails from our readers over the past year and good suggestions from positive-focused critics for future improvements.

According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth is $1011.17! per day

Inbound links: 1085

Technorati rank: 34,021

So today, I'm announcing a series of new "smart" initiatives that we will be kicking off in October 2006.

The Smart Economy is growing exponentially and so are we, right along with it.

Smart Economy Learning Series-monthly workshops in Toronto

Starting in October 2006, we will be launching a monthly series of one-day workshops on topics that our blog readers say interest them. These include:

Building a Busines Case for Smart Devices, objects and services (Date TBA)

Designing winning business modles for Smart Technologies (Date TBA)

Register today, since space will be limited. Past workshops have sold out quickly.

The Smart Economy Web Page

We are finally in the last stages of planning and constructing our new web site for the Smart Economy. Watch out for launch date soon.

The Smart Economy Webinar Series.

Also starting in October 2006, we will host a monthly opportunity for our blog readers to phone in and participate in a "live seminar" which will include power-point slides and a Q&A session, all from the comfort of your PC or laptop. It will be on some current topic related to the smart economy and some rising smart technology that will be coming into prominence soon. This will be a subscription based series.... We will try to keep the price reasonable so that everyone can participate. Subscription information & schedule will be out soon. Watch for announcements.

Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight,, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

September 12, 2006

Today is a bit of an anniversary for the Smart Economy. Since I started on this blog last Fall (Sept 15th, 2005 to be exact), I've posted 500 entries (this is # 501). We've received over 100 comments online and many more private direct emails. Our daily traffic is growing steadily month by month, as word spreads about The Smart Economy. Many other influential and popular web sites, trend syndication services and blogs now link back to us.

According to Pingpoat, The Smart Economy Blog is worth is $1011.17! Per day

Inbound links: 1085

Technorati rank: 34,021

I'd like to hear feedback from you --- our blog readers. How can we improve this site?

what do you enjoy reading about smart technologies?

what else would you like to see?

what don't you like? what annoys you?

what suggestions do you have for future topics?

what would you like to see more coverage of?

do you use RSS? would you subscribe to a Smart Economy RSS news feed?

would you like to hear news about the smart economy on your Mp3 player?

would you like a one-stop-shop to purchase smart technologies?

would you find road maps for smart technologies useful for your worK?

would you subscribe to a monthly online seminar (webinar) on smart technology?

would you find workshops on smart technology topics useful?

how do you use our information? investment decisions? strategic decisions? alliance decisions? other?

Post your replies or comments in the comments box below or send me a private email

I look forward to hearing from you.

Enjoy the rest of 2006 and 2007 and I hope to see you back here on a regular basis.